[malchow]

It is truly shocking the quotient going to fees, taxes, and duties. Almost any flight I take between SFO and Western Europe ends up being >50% fees, taxes, duties.

It makes one wonder what marginal meetings are _not_ taking place because the 50% taxation (the fault of both port operating companies, state governments, the U.S. federal government, and their equivalents on the European side) makes it infeasible for those who are ever so slightly less fortunate.

Imagine the cost of travel -- and of interpersonal connection -- being halved because these taxes went away. Who's to say it's better to hire another Social Security Administration Vice President than it is to enable a CRISPR researcher at Stanford to meet a pharma exec in London?

(You might think that government would grind to a halt. . . but of course government only spends a paltry percentage of its winnings on things like transportation.[1])

[1] http://solomonkahn.com/us_budget/#